PALAEONTOLOGY 



ever provisionally assigned by Mr. Newton to the existing European 

 beaver [Castor fiber). Certain other beaver teeth from the same horizon 

 at Sutton and other localities in the county have been made the types of 

 a distinct species by Professor Lankester with the name of C. veterior. 

 From the characters of the folds of the cheek-teeth, as compared with 

 those of the living beaver, Mr. Newton confirms the distinctness of this 

 species. The type specimens are in the York Museum, but there are 

 others at Ipswich. 



Remains of the rabbit have been stated to occur in the Crag, but 

 the evidence on which the statement is made is not forthcoming. Mr. 

 Newton records however a cheek-tooth of some species of Lepus from 

 the Red Crag. 



Remains of whales, porpoises and dolphins are exceedingly common 

 in the Suffolk Crag, as they also are in the Belgian Crag at Antwerp. 

 In the case of the larger whalebone whales, the remains most easy of 

 identification, and also those most commonly found, are the bones of 

 the internal ear, of which one (the tympanic) is hollow and shell-like, 

 while the other (the periotic) is solid and massive. In the beaked 

 whales, on the other hand, the part most commonly preserved is the solid 

 ivory-like rostrum, or beak, from which the group takes its name. Of 

 the larger toothed whales akin to the modern sperm-whale, teeth are the 

 most abundant remains. As early as 1843 Sir R. Owen' named some of 

 these Crag cetaceans on the evidence of ear bones, and others from their 

 teeth. A revision of cetaceans from the Crag was published by the 

 present writer^ at a much later date. Tympanic bones from the nodule 

 bed of the Red Crag of the county indicate by their shape so-called 

 ' right-whales,' that is to say species allied to the Greenland whale and 

 southern right- whale of the present seas. To one of these types Owen 

 gave the name Balcena affinis ; while a second appears identical with the 

 right-whale from the Belgian Crag described by the late Professor 

 Van Beneden as B. primigenia. Certain variations noticeable in the form 

 of the ear-bones of these whales may be due to differences in the age of 

 the individuals to which they belonged. Tympanies of a much smaller 

 right-whale from the Red Crag have been identified with the two 

 Belgian species B. insignis and B. balcenopsis. The first vertebra of a 

 whale from the Coralline Crag of Sudbourn, in the collection of the 

 British Museum, was referred by Van Beneden himself to the last- 

 mentioned species. It may be well to observe here that as the tympanic 

 and other bones of whales found in the Belgian Crag, belonging to the 

 same species as those from the Red Crag, are not rolled, it is evident that 

 the whales of whose skeletons they formed a part Hved in the Pliocene seas, 

 and it therefore follows that the whales of the Red Crag likewise lived 

 about the time when that deposit was laid down. It may also be men- 

 tioned that Mr. F. W. Harmer' considers the majority of the remains 



1 Pm. Geol. Soc. iv. 283 ; see also ^art. Joum. Geol. Soc. i. 39, and Brit. Foss. Mamm. and Birds. 



2 ^lart. Joum. Geol. Soc. xliii. 7, and Cat. Foss. Mamm. Brit. Mus. v. 16. 

 ' ^art. Joum. Geol. Soc. Ivi. 728 (1900). 



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